The Anti-Advertising Agency » outdoor

The invasion of the Boris bikes is complete. They stand on street corners, corralled like docile, futuristic horses in their blue harnesses. They’re good bikes – sturdy and solid – with a rather pleasing sit-up-and-beg riding position the better to survey the road around you. Undocking them is also quite fun, like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The name has become universal, which is only to be expected, launched as they were with all the pomp the bicycling mayor could muster. It’s not that we’ve forgotten that the bikes were originally Ken’s idea, but that Boris is a far more visible cyclist. The official name, ‘Barclays Cycle Hire’, was never going to take off, despite the lurid corporate livery.

Barclays have got a good deal from the £25 million they contributed to the £140 million scheme. As well as painting their company colours onto the streets, in the form of the pointless cyan-tarmac ‘cycle superhighways’ that run from the centre of London to various suburban hubs, they’ve also bedecked the machines with their logos.

How different from the first municipal bicycle scheme, conceived by the anarchist Provo movement in the Netherlands in the 1960s. The Provos proposed that central Amsterdam should be a car-free zone, and that the council should invest in 20,000 white bicycles that would be owned by the people and free for general use. The council rejected the plan but the Provos went ahead and bought 50 bikes which they released unlocked onto the streets, where they were promptly impounded by the police or stolen. (Some of their other schemes, like the one that urged drivers to ‘offset’ their carbon emissions by carrying small gardens around on the roofs of their cars, were delightfully Swiftian. Others were prescient: the Provos argued that prolific industrial polluters should be fined accordingly, and that the chimneys of the worst offenders should be painted white.)

Barclays’ flagrant appropriation of such a utopian idea was always going to cause tension, and the Boris bikes have become ripe targets for ‘subvertising’. ‘Situationist guerrilla teams’ have been doctoring the broadside ad space over the back wheel.

The Vélib’ scheme, the Parisian equivalent of the Boris Bikes, and the largest and longest running communal bicycle scheme around, has shown that regular investment is a necessary to maintain a fleet like this. A number of the French bikes are dredged from the Seine every month. Others are hung on trees like Christmas decorations, or ridden down stairs until they shake themselves to bits. One even turned up in Australia.

Barclays probably doesn’t give much of a shit about you, but if the bikes are going to continue to be useful then ongoing investment is a must. It’s unlikely that the money will be forthcoming from Boris.

via Invasion of the Boris Bikes « LRB blog. (thanks Mandiberg)

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Smart License Plates: A Very Dumb Idea?

Steve Lambert — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:08:18 +0000

via Ban Billboard Blight

Do you think the idea of California license plates than can show electronic ads is:

1. A great idea, about time.

2. Possibly questionable, but let’s study it.

3. One of the top ten worst ideas of all time.

If you answered yes to #1, don’t bother reading further. If you answered yes to #2, you’re in line with 25 California State Senators who voted to do just that, study the idea. If you answered yes to #3, you can spend the rest of the day (or evening) pondering how woefully befuddled those legislators are to even spend a minute contemplating the idea.

The perpetrator-in-chief is Los Angeles area Senator Curren Price, who apparently sniffs some revenue for a state in perpetual budget crisis as well as perpetual paralysis between cutting spending and raising taxes. How much revenue? Who knows? In numerous news articles on the subject, Price is quoted as saying that he’s only proposing a study of the idea, and that the study will not be funded by the state? Huh? Who will fund it, then? And how will that affect the objectivity of the study’s conclusions?

Here’s the legislative analysis of the proposal. And below is one of the TV news pieces on the issue, with pros (gulp) and cons.

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Consumer Reports: California considers ads on car license plates

Steve Lambert — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:51:52 +0000

Facing a $19 billion deficit, California is seeking creative solutions to its budget shortfall. The state legislature is considering a program that would allow advertising on license plates, according to the Associated Press. The bill would require new, digital plates, with ads appearing in the space currently occupied by the familiar numbers and letters. The ads would only appear once the vehicle had been sitting still for four seconds.

Smart Plate, a San Francisco startup, is reportedly developing a digital license, though it does not have a model that is production ready.

A CNN story suggests that these plates could display paid advertising and public service announcements (PSAs). Further, the new plates could benefit the Amber Alert system, with notifications flashed on plates across the state to apprehend criminals. It’s conceivable, though, that some drivers may not agree or endorse an advertised product or PSA.

In a nation already overrun by advertising, and with distracted driving fatalities and injuries on the rise, it seems like a no-brainer to defeat such legislation that could only make our roads more dangerous.

And California, as opponents to the ads point out, already has some of the worst traffic jams in the country. It stands to reason that ads popping up on cars will only add to driver distraction.

I understand that desperate times call for desperate measures, but it strikes me that this fanciful idea could create more problems than it solves.

What do you think? Post your thoughts and alternative suggestions in the comments below.

via Consumer Reports Cars Blog: Budget brainstorm: California considers ads on car license plates.

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Scented Billboard Stinks

Steve Lambert — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 19:14:21 +0000

From AAA reader David Z…

In Mooresville, N.C a highway billboard advertising steak sold at Bloom/Food Lion, a grocery store, does more than ruin the visual landscape. It wafts onto motorists the smell of cooking meat. That’s right, it’s a scented billboard.

From the local Fox News channel:

The scent is emitted by a high-powered fan at the bottom of the billboard that blows air over cartridges loaded with the BBQ fragrance oil, said Murray Dameron, marketing director for Charlotte-based ScentAir, which provides custom scents and fragrance-delivery systems for businesses, including hotel lobbies, casino gambling and retail stores.

“With all the advertising around, you wanna be able to jump out and really grab the consumer’s attention,” said Angie Hunter, a spokesperson for Bloom stores.

I guess Angie Hunter, nor the town of Mooresville, is concerned about the rights of individuals from having advertising messages forced on them (whether the message is visual or BBQ-scented). Is it time that new ordinances need to be drawn up by local governments regulating this sort of invasive advertising pollution?

via In Mooresville, N.C a highway billboard… – memyselfandhim.

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‘Welcome ad’ not so welcome – baltimoresun.com

Steve Lambert — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 03:28:27 +0000

The huge Under Armour logo recently added to the hillside of Federal Hill Park to welcome volleyball players has angered some residents, who say the advertisement detracts from the aesthetics of the historic neighborhood.

“It’;s hugely disrespectful,” said Paul W. Robinson, president of the Federal Hill Neighborhood Association. Since the logo was added Thursday night, Robinson said, he has received about 40 phones call and at least as many e-mails from residents upset by the advertisement. Had the company paid for the display, Robinson said, he might think differently about the black-and-white graphic with the words “Protect this house” underneath.

read the whole story: ‘Welcome ad’ not so welcome – baltimoresun.com.

(thanks to reader sam!)

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Movement Happening on Illegal Signs

Steve Lambert — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 02:19:50 +0000

March has been a bad time for illegal signs in LA. Finally Illegal Advertisers are going to jail. Here’s info on some of the latest:

LA Weekly profiles advertisers in Los Angeles, as well as AAA compatriot Public Ad Campaign’s Jordan Seiler. Here’s how it starts “Supergraphic multimillionaire Barry Rush couldn’t have been pleased to hear a few weeks ago that Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich had taken the audacious step of jailing a compatriot in arms, a Hollywood landlord who, for an undisclosed sum, cut a deal with a shadowy firm that draped an illegal supergraphic around a historic Hollywood Boulevard building.”
Following the arrest, Ban Billboard Blight reports that several illegal “supergraphic” billboards have come down. “It’s surely no coincidence that companies have been removing these signs after City Attorney Carmen Trutanich filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against one sign company and a number of property owners, engineered the arrest and jailing of a landlord in Hollywood who put up a huge illegal supergraphic on an historic Hollywood Blvd. office building, and issued arrest warrants for sign company executives and a property owner who allowed three illegal supergraphics on yet another Hollywood building.” And they seem to be coming down all over the city.
Fuel Outdoor has finally been removing their illegal signs after losing in court.
Ban Billboard Blight has also reported on NPA Outdoor’s illegal activity in Los Angeles. And Public Ad Campaign has reported the NPA Outdoor is leaving New York.

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